


Are You Happy?

by raspberryhunter



Category: Parker Pyne - Agatha Christie
Genre: Co-workers, Gen, job dissatisfaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28084749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: Claude Luttrell and Madeleine de Sara, on and off duty.
Relationships: Claude Luttrell & Madeleine de Sara
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Are You Happy?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mardia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/gifts).



> Thank you to iberiandoctor for beta!

Mrs. Carrington gazed at the enchanting girl and the devastatingly handsome youth in front of her as they looked at each other, their hearts in their eyes. The two of them were no ordinary paramours, but the Count de Castille and the Grand Duchess Olga, star-crossed lovers of a higher order than the rest of Mrs. Carrington's humdrum existence.

She had been bored and listless, feeling as if there was nothing worthwhile she had done with her life, that whether she lived or died made no difference in the grand scheme of things. But now: now she had unraveled the misunderstandings and deceptions that had kept the Count de Castille and the Grand Duchess Olga from each other; she had made it possible for them to be together.

She had done a Good Thing, one which she could treasure for the rest of her life.

"Thank you," said the Count de Castille fervently to Mrs. Carrington. The graceful, debonair Count spoke English with the fluency of a native Englishman, with only his extremely formal intonation betraying that he had learned English elsewhere. "You have given me back my love. I beg of you to take this as the smallest token of my appreciation." He slid a gold signet ring onto her finger.

"Well! Anyone might have done the same," said Mrs. Carrington, agreeably pleased. She would have to put the ring in her jewel box -- fortunately Mr. Carrington never looked in there, having concluded that his duties ended with giving her necklaces or earrings for birthday and anniversary gifts, without any subsequent consideration for whether she wore or even still possessed them.

The Grand Duchess Olga looked at her gravely, her dark curls cascading down from her tiara over her shoulders. "Anyone? Ah, I would not say that," she said, in her richly accented, almost seductive voice. 

And the Count de Castille sank to one knee. And Mrs. Carrington saw that proud head bend and felt the soft pressure of his lips on her hand...

"We will never forget you," the Count said with feeling, and then gestured at the street behind her. "Ah, and here is the car. It will take you wherever you want to go."

 _I'm the one who will never forget them_ , Mrs. Carrington thought, as she got into the car, to return to a life that suddenly seemed richer and more beautiful for knowing the Count and the Grand Duchess were in it.

*

Meanwhile, the Count and Grand Duchess sat together for half an hour until the car returned. One might, observing them during this time, have doubted the strength of their passion, for they did not look at each other, touch, or speak to each other, as one might have expected of long-parted lovers. After a moment, the Grand Duchess fished a book out of her jewel-encrusted bag and started reading it, while the Count merely gazed off into space.

The car returned and the two of them got in. The Grand Duchess Olga took off her tiara and stuffed it into her bag. "I think that went well," she said, her foreign accent dropping away. 

Mr. Parker Pyne's rule was to never speak out of character until they were in a situation where no one could overhear. She no longer sounded like the Grand Duchess Olga; she was now Madeleine de Sara, employee of Mr. Parker Pyne. (She was also Magali Sayers, called Maggie -- but that was not relevant here.) "Now all we have to do is file the paperwork with Miss Lemon. You or me?"

The Count de Castille -- or Claude Luttrell, as he was known in Mr. Parker Pyne's office (or Robert Smith, called Bobby, in a childhood he tried not to remember) -- gravely shook out his fist in time to Madeleine's; he kept his fist closed, while she opened hers. "Paper beats rock," she said happily.

Claude gave her the crooked grin that had won many a middle-aged woman's heart; Madeleine smiled back at him, clearly and utterly unmoved. "Ah, all right, Madeleine. I'll file it as 'presumed successful.' I suppose she's happier now, and much joy I wish her of it." His cultured tones had also dropped away, and there was a hint of bitterness in his words.

"Now, Claude, what's all this about?" Madeleine cocked her head. "Don't you think that Mrs. Carrington was really a bit of a dear? I thought she was far nicer than the usual Schedule E people we get."

Claude said grumpily, "That's the problem."

Madeleine waited. Claude was grumpy about that too -- he'd been the one to teach Madeleine the technique of judiciously applied silence to draw out one's conversational partner, when she had just begun working for Mr. Parker Pyne -- but it was a technique that worked even if one knew what was being done. Finally Claude said, "You see... I had a Schedule A not long ago. _You_ know."

The Unhappy Spouse (usually with Significant Other) Who Must Be Won Back was one of their bread-and-butter schedules; indeed, it was Mr. Parker Pyne's most common type of customer that came to him as a result of his advertisement: _Are you happy? If not, consult Mr. Parker Pyne._ "Yes."

"I'd got to the part where we were scripted to have a scene. The one where she realizes, Alas, my companion is a Lounge Lizard, all of that. And she, well. Instead of shouting at me or having the betrayal scene I was expecting, she bought me a cigarette case."

"That's a bit different!" Madeleine said, raising a perfect eyebrow. "Within the range of variation, mind."

"Yes, within range," said Claude gloomily. "It's variation seventeen. But I'd never seen it before, myself -- Mr. Pyne puts it at a probability of two percent. She wanted to face the truth. So --"

Madeleine nodded. "You told her you'd reform and make good, and Miss Lemon is going to put an advert for you in the papers."

Claude frowned. "And she was so thrilled about it, too. You could see her eyes. These clients... some of them deserve to be hoodwinked. But some of them are, like you said, a 'bit of a dear.'" Claude lapsed into silence, and this time Madeleine's gaze did not incline him to break it. He did not want to talk about it further; he only knew that sometimes things were starting to bother him that hadn't ever bothered him before. After a few minutes he said, "Got anything this afternoon?"

"Another Schedule A. Variation three." She sighed. "I know what you mean, though. Of course I don't _like_ the ones who make a scene, but sometimes it's a bit easier to deal with them than the ones who are so very _decent_ about it all, while you know you're lying to them the whole time. The one I'm about to go out with is a third case, which is why Mr. Pyne suggested variation three. Single-mindedly attached to his wife, that one. Not likely to have a lot of emotion about me either way."

"Those are the best ones," Claude said, and winced. He had said things like that many times before; he did not understand why it was starting to bother him.

 _Are you happy?_ He was not, and he could hardly consult Mr. Parker Pyne about it.

*

In the room above Mr. Pyne's main office where Claude and Madeleine did their paperwork and stored their costuming equipment, Claude was sitting at the table in the midst of the room organizing his fake mustaches, beards, and hair-extenders when Madeleine ran up to him and hissed into his ear, "Contingency nine-B."

He bent his head silently to show he understood, casually dropped a sheaf of papers over his costume supplies to cover them from view, and then, lazily, as if it were something he did every day, stood up, reached out, and caught Madeleine into his arms.

Her lips turned up to his; if anyone had been watching, they would have seemed like a perfect couple, a matched beautiful pair.

They held still, poised like that for a second, as if they were a living sculpture; then Claude heard a strangled noise from the door. He turned, still holding Madeleine in his arms.

A tall, broadly-built man gazed back at him, hurt and disbelief in his blue eyes. "Madeleine! How could you?"

"Reggie, I told you I didn't want to marry you," Madeleine said coldly. "Now will you believe me?"

"You're heartless!" Reggie said tragically. "Do you mean to say that the whole time you were with _him_?" He pointed a shaking finger at Claude.

"Yes," Madeleine said unsympathetically. "I told you it was just work."

Claude almost laughed, but restrained himself. Madeleine had learned from the best, he thought, about the misdirected truth. Reggie seemed about to say something, but then a woman rushed into the room. She stopped short on seeing Madeleine and Claude together. Claude curled his arm around Madeleine, possessively, and hoped no one else would come into the room, which barely fit the four of them as it was.

"Well," said the other woman. " _Well_." She looked at Reggie, who looked crestfallen.

"I told you I didn't want your husband," said Madeleine haughtily.

"It's all right, no hard feelings," Claude said encouragingly. "I quite understand. She's a lovely girl." The new woman -- Reggie's wife, Claude divined -- shot daggers at him with her eyes.

Reggie looked from him to her, and then to his wife, and Claude could see him wilt. His wife saw it too, and visibly calmed. "Reggie," she said, her voice pitched lower and sweeter, "come along home now, there's a dear. We'll have a nice shepherd's pie for dinner, your favorite."

She continued to talk in this way, murmuring to him as if he were a child or a pet, and like a child or a pet Reggie docilely followed her as she went out the door, without so much as another glance at either Claude or Madeleine.

Claude kept Madeleine in his arms, and she stayed there for a long minute. Until --

A loud thunking noise came from the floor; it was Miss Lemon banging a broom on the ceiling of the office below, giving them the all-clear.

At once they sprang apart as if there were a repellent force between them. Madeleine was quite sweet, Claude thought, but there was no possible way he could have any romantic feelings for someone who worked for Mr. Parker Pyne, who was a fraud just like him. And he knew she felt the same.

"'No hard feelings'?" queried Madeleine, though her thoughts seemed far away.

"It worked, didn't it?" Claude grinned at her. "Who's this Reggie chap, anyway?"

"That... was my single-minded Schedule A," Madeleine said distractedly. "I _thought_ he was single-mindedly devoted to his wife, anyway. The point was just to get his wife to pay attention to him. He wasn't supposed to fall in love with me at all! I hope he'll go back to her now."

Claude realized to his dismay that she had tears in her eyes. She blinked them away -- no employee of Mr. Parker Pyne was supposed to indulge in sentimentality on the job -- and added, "Mr. Pyne says that Contingency nine-B has an eighty-three percent success rate with no further incidents, so hopefully we're in the clear."

He nodded. "I'll be available if another round is needed, or if we need to break out one of the other Contigencies." And yet, the part of his brain that sometimes thought strange new thoughts said -- why were Contingencies even needed? What did that say about them?

She nodded back and smiled, but he thought there was sadness in the smile.

_Are you happy?_

*

Two weeks, three schedule B clients, and four schedule A clients later, Claude said to Madeleine, "I'm leaving this job."

Her eyes widened. "Leaving Mr. Pyne?" There was a note of incredulity in her voice; he supposed he deserved it. It was excellent pay, with many perks, and he still often thought he was mad to leave it. And anyone else who knew how he felt about money would certainly think he was mad.

"I've got a job with an acting troupe." He shrugged. "It's still fakery... but at least everyone involved knows it's fakery." He laughed shortly. "Oh, I suppose I shall still end up becoming a kept man, one way or another. I do like having money, and acting doesn't pay well. But at least the lady shall know what she's getting into."

Madeleine's lips compressed. She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "Do you think they might have room for an actress?"

Now it was his turn to be surprised. "Why -- yes, they do; the man who hired me was just asking me if I knew of anyone else who might be interested. But I had no idea --"

"I've been thinking," she said. "Since Reggie." There was a note of unhappiness in her voice which Claude had never heard before, and he realized the incident with Reggie had upset her far more than he had known. "I might welcome the more straightforward life of a kept woman, at that."

"Ah," said Claude, not needing to hear more. But this new unaccountable sensation of his that sometimes made him worry when he'd never worried before made him say, "Do you think Mr. Pyne will be caught off guard with both of us leaving?"

"No," Madeleine said thoughtfully. "No, I don't think Mr. Pyne will be all that surprised, do you?"

*

Mr. Parker Pyne sighed. He'd seen this day coming since Claude had first started developing a conscience. In his experience, it was not especially common to even start the process, but fifty-eight percent of the dissipated youths who started developing a conscience eventually actually obtained one. And ninety-four percent of those were indeed happier elsewhere. 

It _was_ too bad he and Madeleine had coordinated leaving at the same time; both of them had been very well trained, and it would take some time to bring up another set of staff to the same level of quality.

He shrugged and pressed the buzzer under his desk to summon Miss Lemon. When she entered the room, moving with her usual efficiency, Pyne said, "Get me the dossiers on currently active lounge lizards and beautiful girls who can be trained as vamps."

(Whether _he_ was happy never entered his mind at all, curiously enough.)

"At once, sir," said Miss Lemon.


End file.
